Pelotome –
around North Macedonia on a bicycle.
“Here amid the ruined remnants of Roman and Venetian sway, beside Homer’s Axios as it sweeps on to the blue Ægean, through the yellow plains and bare brown hills of a Macedonian upland, my last thought would have been to meet an Englishwoman. But, before my iron steed and I had been an hour in the town, the news had spread like wildfire and reached her ears that an ‘Ingleese’ had come from the mountains on “a flying wheel.”
~ Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe – Hugh Callan (1887).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
August 1886 – Published October 1887.
Wanderings: On Wheel and On Foot in Europe.
Setting out from Glasgow on the 3rd July, 1886, to catch the steamer to Hamburg, Hugh Callan details his 1,500 mile, high-wheeler, 33 day journey “on wheel down Europe from the German ocean to the Aegean Sea”, being the first person to enter, what is now, North Macedonia by bicycle, crossing the then Turkish border from Vranje in Serbia, and continuing through Kumanovo, Uskub (Skopje), and Köprülü (Veles), towards Thessaloniki in Greece.
The second part of the book is dedicated to his earlier July 1885 trip “on wheel up the Rhine Valley, from Amsterdam to Geneva, and back by Antwerp,” while Part Three follows his six week walking tour “‘on the tramp’ in Belgium and France,” in 1881.
- By Hugh Callan.
- Published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, London.
WANDERINGS ON WHEEL AND ON FOOT
“After crossing a river by difficult stepping-stones, we came to the Douane at Kumanovo, a strong garrison town. Nobody spoke anything I understood ; so my score of Turkish words had to be aired, till eventually a Greek innkeeper came to my aid.
In the evening I went down to see, but especially to be seen, for I was the great centre of attraction and received with marked civility everywhere in the town.”
~ Wanderings on Wheel and on Foot, Hugh Callan (1887).